


Death in a Parisian Morgue

by elle_nic



Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: Angst, Crying, Death, F/F, I wasn't even sad when I wrote this???, I'm Sorry, Please Don't Hate Me, This Is STUPID, What Was I Thinking?, angstiest angst, angsty, i don't love this for us, love you, really sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 13:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16577213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_nic/pseuds/elle_nic
Summary: Death had not brushed shoulders with Andréa until the day before.Heed the tags, my children, this one's a doozy.





	Death in a Parisian Morgue

The room was colder than she’d thought it would be. _To keep the bodies from decomposing_ , her thoughts supplied. She tried not to think about it much. Before today, death had not touched Andréa Priestly very intimately at all. Her grandparents had died before she was born, her parents were fit as horses and her sister and her family were in their primes. Death had not brushed shoulders with Andréa until the day before.

She had been in a café in Berlin at the time. Coffee was not something she had indulged in since she was pregnant a number of years ago and so she was enjoying a peppermint tea in the German midday sunshine when her phone chimed for an incoming call. She had smiled thinking her wife was calling to complain about _complete and utter incompetence_ or perhaps _a painful lack of inspiration this season_. She had not recognised the voice on the other end, but she could understand the French.

“… _Décédé… Je suis vraiment désolé…”_

She had boarded the next train within the hour. It was over sixteen hours later that she arrived at the destination the woman on the phone had told her to go to. And so here she stood looking at a black body bag on a cold metal slab in the coldest room Andréa had ever been in. The gentleman beside her awaited her nod, and once he received it, he unzipped the bag and revealed its content. The crying would come again later and in abundance, but for now, quiet tears rolled down the apples of flushed cheeks.

Her eyes, _her gorgeous eyes,_ were shut, her face serene. Andréa reached out, a silent sob passing her lips as she stroked her wife’s cheek, her skin still so soft but colder than it had the right to be. She looked so young without her disappointment on her face. Her eyes had wrinkled since they married, her smile lines deepened, but she had only grown more beautiful to Andréa. And here she was. In a cold room. With cold skin. Dead.

A major heart attack, they’d said. She was dead before she even hit the ground. Her wife, dead. _Miranda, dead._ When her tears hindered her vision and her hands became desperate was when the gentleman excused himself for a moment outside. Her hands moved swiftly, trying to feel everything left of her wife, everything left of her lover. Her hair was silky, but the hairspray was non-existent. Her skin velvet smooth but bare of any makeup. Her lips, still plump but uncoloured. She was pale everywhere.

She didn’t beg, didn’t whimper or wail. Her wife wouldn’t have liked to hear her so sad. The only sounds she made were the harsh pants of her desperate breathing, and even that she couldn’t hear over the mad thumping of her broken heart. She kissed Miranda’s cheek, told her in all the languages she knew that she loved her, would always love her, and vowed never to return to France again. Nothing good ever happened in France for either of them. There was nothing enchanting about a city that took, took, _took_ from her. Nothing beautiful about their separation time and time again.

There was _nothing_ poetic about death in a Parisian morgue.

**Author's Note:**

> Talk about a sharp left turn into Sadville, amirite? I have nothing to say for myself with this. I collect quotes from movies and tv shows and books and fanfics and the quote I took inspiration from for this is the title. I had always attributed a level of morbid poeticism about the quote, but I know from my own experience seeing a passed family member in a morgue that there is nothing to derive from the experience but emotional turmoil. I am choosing, for my own sake more than anything, not to include this as a part of Till A' The Seas Gang Dry mainly because that little series is for happy endings only and this is so far from being happy it's stupid. 
> 
> Please forgive, and please enjoy (if that's even possible) :)))


End file.
